Summertime in Japan : Tokyo Art Marathon part 1

Yayoi Kusama, Love Is Calling, 2013. Installation view. Photo by M-KOS

Summer in Tokyo started off cooler than usual in the first few weeks of our stay, followed by heatwaves shining through the city streets, filled with polyphonic soundscapes of cicadas. Luckily most art spaces were still open despite the solstice mood, for M-KOS to present its Tokyo art marathon report:

Mori Art Museum celebrates its 10th anniversary with the exhibition entitled “All You Need Is LOVE” showcasing about 200 artworks such as modern masters Marc Shagall, Constantin Brancusi and Fridha Karlo, contemporary greats David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama and Jeff Koons, as well as younger generations Richard Billingham, Shilpa Gupta and Masashi Asada and “virtual” popstar Miku Hatsune. The exhibition was laid out over five sub-themed to include: What is Love?; A Couple in Love; Love is Losing; Family and Love; Love Beyond. (through 1 September 2013)

Thomas Bayrle, “Monuments of Traffic” Installation view, 2013. Photo by M-KOS

Espace Louis Vuitton in Omotesando district invited German artist Thomas Bayrle to the 7th floor gallery of the Vuitton store designed by Japanese architect Jun Aoki. The exhibition entitled “Monuments of Traffic”, featured cardboard modules of highways leading to nowhere (“Carmaggedon”, 2013), recycled from the project he presented at dOCUMENTA (13). The highways face another work (“Conducteur”, 2013), an Audi windshield wiper erected on a steel column also hosting a DVD player, driving music through an adjoining set of speakers. This last piece dominates the space with its wiper moving left and right, squeaking to the rhythm of Eric Satie’s “Furniture Music”, to create an overall calming yet sinister ambience. (through 1 September 2013)

Garder Eide Einarsson, “I Am the Only Free Man on This Train” Installation view, 2013. Photo by M-KOS

Rat Hole Gallery presents a solo exhibition by Oslo born New York/Tokyo based artist Garder Eide Einarsson. Located on a sleek fashion street in Minami-Aoyama surrounded by high-end stores like Prada, Comme des Garçons, Miu Miu and more, the commercial gallery showcased Einarsson’s “I Am the Only Free Man on This Train” a series of large scale florescent pink paintings accompanied by steel sculptures and silkscreen prints. (through 6 October 2013)

Noor Abu Arafeh, A State closer to Death than it is to Life, 2012. Detail. Photo by M-KOS

Tokyo Wonder Site [TWS] opened in 2001 with the assistance of funds by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, organizing residencies, exhibitions, lectures as well as numerous joint programs with international centers. It now runs three different venues in Aoyama, Hongo and also Shibuya, the latter introducing the third installment of Tokyo Story 2013 called “Identities in the World”, an exhibition composed of five participants from last year’s TWS residency program: Kosuke Ikeda (Japan), Noor Abu Arafeh (Palestine), Sutthirat Supaparinya (Thailand), Yuki Okumura (Japan) and Mohamed Abdelkarim (Egypt). (through 23 September 2013)

Artist Junta Egawa works on one of his paintings at TWS Hongo. Photo by M-KOS

TWS Hongo just opened another of its many exhibition programs; part fourth of TWS-Emerging 2013 to launch four of 20 selected emerging artists in Japan: Junta Egawa, Noriyasu Kaida, Satoko Matsui and Sayako Ichikawa. During our visit, we saw Egawa painting his canvas on site, as if the space was his personal studio. Of the eight paintings hung on the wall, some were still blank while others seemed near completion. Not quite the extroverted type, Egawa simply appeared to be revealing the time-consuming process of his painting instead of making a performance out of his presence. (through 25 August 2013)

Facade of the SCAI The Bathhouse in Yanaka, Tokyo. Photo by M-KOS

SCAI THE BATHHOUSE in Yanaka accommodated the group show “Double Message” with Genpei Akasegawa, Shusaku Arakawa, Taro Izumi, Kounosuke Kawakami, Nobuko Tsuchiya, Didier Courbot, Natsuyuki Nakanishi and Mrs. Yuki. For this occasion, the public bath turned commercial gallery revisited the 1960s as a point of reference to map out relationships and influences by the Japanese avant-garde intertwined with younger generations of artists. (ended 2 August 2013)

Kazuhiko Hachiya, M-02J, 2013. Photo by M-KOS

3331 Arts Chiyoda, recently celebrating its third anniversary since the art space complex converted from an old primary school. Media artist Kazuhiko Hachiya’s main gallery solo exhibition, entitled “Open Sky 3.0”, presents documentation of his dream-come-true project, ‘personal flying machines’ which the artist has been developing over the past few years. The show includes actual hand made aircrafts, video and photographs of the test flights as well as a flight simulator. (through 16 September 2013)